A father-of-three accused of murdering his wife and family yesterday claimed he had returned home to find the battered bodies of his children then fled the country leaving his wife dead with no recollection of how she was killed, a court heard yesterday.

Former taxi driver Rahan Arshad, 36, who denies murdering his sons Adam, 11, and Abbas, eight, daughter Henna, six, and his wife, Uzma Rahan, 32, described how he "blanked out" after making the discovery at the family home in Cheadle Hulme, Greater Manchester, on July 28 last year. He told Manchester crown court that he found his children dead in a downstairs room, then went upstairs to confront his wife, who said to him in Urdu: "Are you satisfied?"

Mr Arshad said this was the last thing he could remember until he found himself in the bath holding a rounders bat, which has since been identified as the murder weapon. He said: "I just blanked out."

Mr Arshad then put the bat in the garden bin, covered the children's bodies with blankets, packed a bag and drove to Heathrow to board a pre-booked flight to Thailand. The bodies were discovered a month later.

Mr Arshad's counsel, Ian Glen QC, asked him to explain why he had bought the single plane ticket two weeks previously. "It would have been a holiday," he said. "Uzma had been to Pakistan in February on her own and I needed a break as well." He said he did not tell his wife because he did not think she would let him go.

Mr Arshad said that on the evening of the killings he had been arguing with his wife after he admitted that the family were not going on a holiday to Dubai the following week.

Uzma was hoping he would buy her gold there, he said, and "went crazy" when he told her the truth.

He had previously led her to believe that the trip was booked for the children's summer holiday, when in reality he had booked a single ticket to Bangkok, with the return leg booked for August 18. The Dubai trip was too expensive at £7,100, Mr Arshad said.

The court had heard earlier that Mr Arshad went to Bangkok with £3,000 and the equivalent of £1,160 in Thai currency.

Mr Arshad said he did not return to Britain on August 18 as planned because he panicked.

"I didn't know what I was doing. I couldn't believe what was happening. I wanted to commit suicide actually," he said.

When asked why he had told a Thai immigration official that he had phoned his wife after arriving in Bangkok, Mr Arshad said: "I didn't know what to say. I was really scared."

Mr Glen then asked what he had meant, when he reportedly told police: "I confess to the murder ... but my kids, killing my kids."

Mr Arshad said that he meant that he had killed Uzma, but that she had killed the children. He then denied murdering his daughter and two sons.

Before Mr Arshad gave evidence, Mr Glen took the unusual step of directly addressing the jury.

"The question is, which one of them killed the children?" he said.

"If the defendant returned home to find his wife had killed his three children, you can't imagine a better case for provocation for killing her. It is an unusual case, it is a shocking case."

"You may debate the possibilities. What mother, no mother could possibly kill her children? Leaving the slightly greater possibility of the father. It is no more likely that a father would do it than a mother would do it."

"We would say this- we have a father, or a mother, who was mentally ill. Only one of these two was mentally ill unfortunately, and that was Uzma, and that tends towards concluding she did it."